Environmentalism not a cult

Press, 31 August 1977, Page 35

Environmentalism not a cult

JOHN WILSON

At a recent meeting between Governor Brown of California and labour leaders in the state, an executive officer of the Californian Federation of Labour told Mr Brown that “everyone in this room has the feeling that there are environmentalists in your administration — I call them cultists — who are absolute death and destruction to the economic growth and future of this state.”

This officer was voicing a belief which is also current in some circles in New Zealand that satisfying the demands of environmentalists by preserving scenery, curbing pollution and discouraging waste threatens jobs, increases the cost of major projects (leaving less money to invest in other projects that would create new jobs and add to production) and makes energy more expensive. “Energy” and “jobs” have become in some circles talismanic words used to justify refusing to meet the demands of environmentalists.

In the United States, environmentalists have been able to counter the charges that their efforts have been responsible for increasing unemployement by pointing to the large and increasing numbers of new jobs which the “pollution control” industry has brought into being. The New Zealand market for pollution control equipment and services is too small to support a domestic “pollution control” industry of any size. New Zealand environmentalists can probably appeal to the argument that concern about the environment provides significant new employment opportunities only in the case of recycling or reuse of rubbish and waste. Investment in recycling or in other methods of waste disposal acceptable to the environmentalists could provide new jobs and increase production to the same extent as investment in a more .orthodox industry and so boost the standard economic indicators of G.N.P. and numbers of jobs, perhaps to the extent necessary to off-set the loss of jobs and production caused by the closure of those firms and industries which cannot meet even minimum environmental standards.

But the loss of jobs (except, notably, in the case of the West Coast timber industry) has not been the charge levelled most frequently against environmentalists in New Zealand, perhaps because unemployment has not yet become as serious a problem here as it is overseas. But New Zealand has in any case fewer heavy pollution industries or individual factories whose continued existence is seriously threatened by the imposition of new requirements in-

tended to protect the natural environment. More telling, in the New Zealand context, has been the charge that assessing the “environmental impact'' of major projects has been expensive and time-consuming, even when the assessment has revealed that the project as planned has no major environmental drawbacks, reducing proportionately the benefit derived from those projects. The president of the Institute of Engineers (Mr P.

G. Scoular) remarked recently that objections raised against projects after expensive design work had already been done caused costly delays. Mr Scoular

suggested that it “would be worth while to conduct cost analyses of several major projects to acquaint the public with the huge expenses involved in delays."

The first retort of environmentalists to such charges would probably be that allowing projects to go ahead without any assessment of their environmental impact might result in even greater economic waste and inefficiency than may have been caused by allowing environmentalists a say in the planning of the project. Enormous costs have been incurred as the result of unforeseen environmental effects of major projects overseas. The Aswan Dam in Egypt is an obvious instance of inadequate consideration of the environmnetal effects of the project resulting in serious, subsequent economic loss. On a humbler level, in China, sparrows were all but wiped out in an effort to reduce the loss of grain which was scarcely achieved because with the sparrows gone, crop-destroying insects increased greatly in numbers. In New Zealand, the length of the country’s railway lines has been substantially reduced on economic grounds. Now, taking especially the consumption of energy into account, it is at

least debatable that it would have been economically as well as environmentally sounder to maintain the railway system. The recent suggestions that if the proposed high dam is built across the Clutha River, the country stands to lose more in lost

orchard production and mineral (coal) production than it stands to gain from in-1 creased output of electricity are the most recent reminders that close attention to the wider environmental effects of major projects need not necessarily result in economic loss but may, in some circumstances. be economically advantageous in the long run. The comprehensive. multi-resource investigations which environmentalists urge are necessary before major planning

d decisions are made to reduce s the possibility of long-term r economic loss from pursuing d plans which appear, immedid ately, economically advanr tagebus.

Nor are the delays and costly recasting of plans which have on occasion occured in New Zealand as a result of environmentalists objecting to development

plans necessary to satisfy environmental concerns. The real fault lies in the organisation of planning. In the immediate future, those convinced that excessive concern for the envi-l j ronment impairs the coun-1 I try’s economic performance! | are likely to resist both pro-1 posals that the Commission! i for the Environment be (given the power to decide “whether” projects should go ahead and not just “how” they should proceed and proposals that environmental aspects of major projects be considered earlier in the planning of major projects. The commission’s role at present is limited to auditing the environmental impact reports prepared after most of the planning of major projects is completed. In such circumstances, if the project is in any way environmentally unsound, satisfying the environmentalists will result in waste, delays and extra expense of which Mr Scoular complained. If the commission were involved in the planning of major projects from an earlier stage, this waste, delay and expense would not occur to the samei extent.

The real cause of the* largely false impression that allowing environmentalists a say in the planning of major projects is economically wasteful and expensive are faulty planning procedures, not concern for the environment alone.

The other major charge which New Zealand environmentalists have had to answer is that their efforts are impeding the efforts of others to ensure that New Zealand has a plentiful supply of energy available at as low a price as possible, have, for example, refused to allow the Electricity Department to wring the last) possible kilowatt of electricity from hydro schemes in the interests of preserving the scenery (Mana- 1 pouri) and have increased 1 the price of electricity prod-! uced by burning coal by re-' quiring the installation of expensive equipment to prevent pollution of the atmos-' phere (Huntly). The environmentalists again, however, have answers to this charge. The first is that if cheap energy | is sought regardless of the damage to the environment' costs build up elsewhere — lost time and medical treatment resulting from air pollution are the obvious exam-: nles — and have to be paid by someone else than the, iuser ot the “cheap” energy. The second is that the environmentally sound methods of producing more energy, although they may be initially more expensive, have the advantages of not increasing the country’s dependence oh an imported resource and of being renewable. To begin devising now an energy system which incorporates the features beloved of environmentalists will serve the country well, economically, when the world's supply of oil eventually runs out. This touches on perhaps the main reason why there is bad blood between some concerned about the day-to-day functioning of the economy and some environmentalists — they see things in a different time perspective. A businessman running an individual company must be concerned primarily with the immediate costs his company must face in meeting new environmental requirements — whether this involves cleaning up plant effluents or paying more for energy. Such a businessman’s attention is focused on his daily production and shipping schedules and his costs and earnings for the next quarter or the next '.ear. The environmentalists have both a longer and wider view. They tend to ask who is paying the present “hidden” costs of pollution and What the long-term effects — economic as well as environmental — might be of not taking certain steps. In the short run it is, of course, the individual businessman who must meet the immediate costs — which often appear to him ruinous — of checking pollution at

■,its source. The alm of envi- . ronmental policy in the short term should be to de'jvise ways of enabling businessmen to cope with these immediate costs without the economy as a whole • suffering severe dislocation • Somehow, some of the long- > term savings which the com- . I munitv as a whole will se [ cure from reduced levels of . pollution must be made , available immediately to ( those businesses which must ; pay the immediate costs of ( achieving the reduction. . I Even if few environmen--1 talists consciously consider the long-term economic well.(being of the country, their “Programme" appears . to promise an economic futjure as sound in the long run as that promised by the /orthodox economic proJ gramme of expanding the . per capita production and of goods and >'services indefinitely The /world — and New Zealand . cannot escape this situation 'any more than any other .; country — is bumping up .’•against the limits of many j! resources which were once >I used without any thought that the supply was finite. . Recognition of this is the ; bedrock of most of the particular stands individual en- ’ vironmentalists take. . What environmentalists Jean claim, with some /justification, is that they are 1' bringing social and economic . habits into line with what J the economic realities will . be before too very long and .that they are therefore /ensuring that the transition (which will l.ave to be made j to a different set of econ i.omic circumstances will be easier than it would other5 wise have been >1 Circumstances are fast < reaching the point in which j conventional economic per.jformance, recorded by the /standard gross indicators of ! I national growth, employment .'and product and in some /cases the individual indie- » ator of a particular com»pan y ’ s or industry’s profitability, may be no ; longer the proper standards . to apply. . Many environmentalists (admit cheerfully that they r jare willing to trade-off imI mediate economic perform.lance for such intangibles as Jan improvement in the qual.'ity of life. A claim which J they have not made as vigtlorously, but which might . ensure that their arguments /received a better hearing r i among those more tmmedijlately concerned about the . country’s economic performjlance, is that there may also s be a future economic trade- . off from giving concern fi about the environment (greater weight today in the fl form of an economy better '[geared to continue to pro- ® vide goods and services in si an era of greater scarcity of tiresources. _